This community bank is called Todos Juntos. It is made up of 18 entrepreneurs who work in different sectors, including coal sales, textiles, clothing sales, painting, and others. All of the members live in the city of Valdivia.

Yeisi is a member of the community bank. In the photo, she is in the back, and you can only see her smiling face. She has a hairstyle to the side. She works selling clothing. She started selling second-hand clothes two years ago, however two months ago, she began selling new clothing. She already has a large number of customers thanks to her past jobs. Her schedule is flexible, which allows her to organize her own day.

Her merchandise is made in the city of Santiago, specifically in the Meiggs neighborhood, an area that provides products to merchants at a low cost. With this loan, she will invest in her business and purchase new clothing. Her goal is to have an established store for her business so that she can stock up on new designs.

Yeisi lives with her mother and her two daughters, who are 3 and 10 years old. Her dream on a personal level is to provide her daughters with a quality education so that they can be professionals.

She is very happy and thankful for the loans and services provided by Fondo Esperanza. She comments that she feels very comfortable with the members of the community bank and the meetings given by them.

Valdivia is a city in the south of Chile, located in the Los Rios region. It is known for having one of the few navigable rivers in Chile, the Calle Calle. Valdivia's main economic activities are shipbuilding, lumber, paper, cellulose (Celco), brewing, and milling. Tourism also plays an important role, as does university educational services, headed by the Universidad Austral de Chile.

Additional Information

About Fondo Esperanza

Fondo Esperanza (FE) is a private non-profit organization that supports entrepreneurship by providing micro-credit and training to people living in poverty in well over 100 cities throughout Chile. By providing these services, FE aims to improve the living conditions of the entrepreneurs and their families. In 2010, FE provided loans to more than 41,000 entrepreneurs. It utilizes a communal banking model in which groups of 18 to 25 clients meet on regularly and guarantee each other’s loans. The members use their portion of the loan to create or expand their own businesses. In the group meetings, clients receive training though the FE Entrepreneurship School, which enhances clients’ personal and business skills and ability to work in groups.

This is a Group Loan

In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a larger group of individuals. The group is there to provide support to the members and to provide a system of peer pressure, but groups may or may not be formally bound by a group guarantee. In cases where there is a group guarantee, members of the group are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members in the case of delinquency or default.

Kiva's Field Partners typically feature one borrower from a group. The loan description, sector, and other attributes for a group loan profile are determined by the featured borrower's loan. The other members of the group are not required to use their loans for the same purpose.